Impressionism Impressionism in general came about after the Romantic era. It is said to have ‘started’ in the late 19th Century and continued well into the first half of the 20th Century. Impressionism was a result of the painters’ and composers’ impressions on perhaps a piece of scenery (artists) or a piece of previously composed music (composers). The style was, in both painting and composing, based on not having any defined ‘edges’, so to speak: the music had no set requirements in order to be classified as a piece of Impressionist music, and the paintings were meant to be drawn in a way which would make you think that the artist had taken one look at the landscape or view in front of them and had then tried to re-construct the landscape without defining the general features too much. The traditional European style of painting was broken in the 19th Century. It marked the beginning of the Impressionism, and was an art style which brought in more scientific research on the aspects of colour, so as to achieve more exact representation of both colour and tone.
There was also a change in the method used, and this contributed to bringing about a very sudden change. Paint was applied in small touches instead of in broader strokes, and often artists would paint outdoors in order to observe and then paint a so-called ‘fleeting’ impression of colour and light. This resulted in a more distinguishable emphasis on the artist’s own impressions on the subject he or she was painting. The point of the style was to paint as though the artist had only caught a quick glimpse of it.
The colours used were almost always bright and vibrant with lots of colour. The majority of the painted scenes were outdoor ones, and this was supposed to result in images which were without too much detail, but at the same time with bold colours. The most well-known painters were Edouard Manet, Camille Pissaro, Edgar Degas, Alfred Sisley, Claude Monet, Berthe Morisot and Pierre Auguste Renoir. One of our most famous Impressionist artists is Claude Oscar Monet, born on the 14th November in 1840. He grew up as the youngest of two sons in Le Havre, a city on the north-west coast of France. Monet expressed his love for art – as well as his hopes of becoming an artist – at an early age, and he started his studies at the age of eleven at the Le Havre arts school. Not long after he began selling charcoal paintings to the locals, and for a couple of years he studied with Jacques-Francois Ochard. After these years of practise Monet met and befriended Eugene Boudin, who not only taught Monet the “plein air” technique, but also helped him perfect his oil painting skills.
When Monet’s mother passed away in 1857 Monet left school in order to live with his aunt. During this time Monet visited the Louvre in Paris and observed the way in which the famous artists’ work had been imitated. However, instead of copying their style Monet simply sat by the window and painted what he saw, using the paints with which he travelled.
Four years later, Monet joined the First Regiment of African Light Cavalry in Algeria, but after only two years his aunt petitioned to have him sent home again on account of being diagnosed with typhoid. To make up for the five years of incomplete service in the cavalry, Monet decided to study art at university, and during this time, whilst studying with Charles Gleyre, he became acquainted with Pierre-Auguste Renoir, Frederic Bazille and Alfred Sisley. It was with these people Monet shared ideas on creating a new and more rapid form for painting. During these years he also met and had a son with Camille Doncieux, whom he married in June 1870.
Only a month after their wedding the Franco-Prussian War began, and so Monet and Camille moved to England. Monet continued to observe artists, and refused to give up even though his paintings were not accepted for display in exhibitions. In 1871 Monet and his family moved to Argenteuil, and it was then that Monet decided to focus more on developing his Impressionistic style. The result was “Impression, Sunrise”, only a year later, and this painting also served to name the Impressionist movement.
In 1876 Monet’s wife, Camille, fell ill, and although she managed to give birth to their second son, Michel, she never completely recovered, and died from tuberculosis in 1879. Monet painted her on her death bed as a last tribute.
In the months which followed Camille’s death Monet was in a state of depression, but once he recovered his determination to create masterpieces grew even stronger. It was at this point that he began painting series of paintings instead of single ones, and with this decision came the one to move into Ernest Hoshede’s home. Hoshede was considered a patron of the arts, but when he began to experience financial problems Monet moved to Possy with Alice, Hoshede’s wife, and her six children. Not long after they moved again, to Giverny this time, where Monet planted a huge garden which later served to inspire his famous willow and water lily paintings. After Hoshede’s death, in 1892, Alice and Monet got married.
With a continued focus on series’ paintings, Monet used his garden consistently for inspiration, and after Alice’s death in 1911, and Jean’s death in 1914, Monet developed cataracts. This affected his ability to see colour, but the paintings which he made between this time and the point at which he had surgery were readjusted later on.
Claude Oscar Monet died from lung cancer in 1926. He was buried in the Giverny church cementery, and the people in his family who were still alive passed his Giverny home and gardens to the French Academy of Fine Arts in 1966. Pierre-Auguste Renoir was born on the 25th February 1841 in Limoges in France, and was the sixth of seven children. His mother, Marguerite Meret, was a dressmaker, and his father, Léonard Renoir, was a tailor. His family moved to Paris in 1844, and since Renoir’s drawing talents were obvious already then, he became an apprentice in a porcelain factory, where he had the job of painting plates. When the factory went out of business Renoir began working for his brother, decorating fans. During his years in Paris Renoir frequently visited the Louvre (just as Monet did), where he studied the art created by 18th Century artists such as Antoine Watteau, François Boucher and Jean Honoré Fragonard. The admiration which Renoir had for these painters and their pieces are reflected in his own pieces throughout his career.
In 1862, at the approximate age of twenty-one, Renoir decided to really take his painting seriously, and shortly after this decision he met Charles Gleyre. It was at this point that he met Monet, Alfred Sisley and Jean Frédéric Bazille. However, Gustave Courbet and Edouard Manet were also great influences on Renoir, something which was shown in the six years which followed.
The 1860’s were hard years for Renoir. At times he was too poor to buy paints and canvas, and his work was rejected in exhibitions during both 1866 and 1867. However, his breakthrough came the following year, when Lise (a portrait of his girlfriend Lise Tréhot) was accepted to be displayed. Renoir continued to develop his work and studied paintings by other artists which were famous during that time, such as Camille Corot and Eugène Delacroix. In 1869 Renoir worked with Monet at a bathing spot on the river Seine called La Genouillère. During this time both artists developed an interest for painting light and water, and therefore it is not surprising that their styles were almost identical. However, as they continued to work together during the 1870’s their styles became more indivualised, and in 1874 Renoir participated in his first Impressionist exhibition, featuring Opera box amongst others.
During those same years Renoir’s popularity increased despite appearing in Impressionist exhibitions, which were at the time targets for public scorn. He made friends with Caillebotte, one of the first supporters of the Impressionists who also happened to be backed by art dealers and collectors. Renoir also produced some of his most celebrated Impressionist scenes in the 1870’s, such as Swing and Moulin de la Galette, which were both painted in 1876.
Later on, in the 1880’s, Renoir decided to ‘isolate’ himself from the Impressionists. He was discontent with the direction which the new style was taking in his hands, and so he travelled to Italy in 1881 in order to gain a different insight on painting. He was especially impressed by Raphael, and during the next six years or so Renoir’s paintings were drawn in a much ‘tighter’ and more classical manner. He made sure to outline his figures in an effort to provide more clarity in his pictures, resulting in some of the least impressive paintings in his career.
Fortunately Renoir was over his dry period by the end of the 1880’s, and the result of his ‘comeback’ was Music Lesson (1891), Young Girl Reading (1892) and Sleeping Bather (1897). These were some of the last paintings which Renoir painted before he suffered his first attack of arthritis in 1903. He settled in Cagnes-sur-Mer in France for the winter, and though his arthritis made it hard – sometimes impossible – to paint, he continued with his work, at times resorting to tying the paintbrush to his hand.
Pierre-Auguste Renoir died at Cagnes-sur-Mer on the 3rd December, 1919, but not before achieving a great victory: selling one of his last pieces, Madame Georges Charpentier (1877) to the state before he died. He also managed to go to see it in the Louvre in Paris before his death. The era of Impressionist music began in the late 19th Century and continued into the early 20th Century. It was a movement which began in France, which also explains why most of the Impressionist composers were French (although Impressionism also affected the music style in England). The Impressionism era occurred as a result of the excesses of the Romantic era.
Impressionist music was not a set type of music – its main goal was to create a certain mood or atmosphere, and this was usually done through harmony, melody, “colour”, rhythm and form. The musical pieces in that period were usually written in short forms such as nocturne, arabesque and prelude.
Another characteristic of Impressionist music was the way in which it used the scale system. Instead of using simply the major and minor scales, it put into use the pentatonic and whole-tone scales. Debussy’s music, for example, was influenced by asian music. In addition, the use of harmony and dissonance was great, not to mention the new way in which chords were used to set “colour” and moo, instead of simply serving to build and relieve tension in the musical pieces.
Generally the mood and atmosphere created by Impressionist music was that of a dreamy and out-of-world feeling. This came as a result of having less prominent melodies, and combined with the weakened concept of tonality it formed a style of music which was based on the composer’s impressions, and aimed to bringing forth the listener’s impressions.
Joseph Maurice Ravel was born on the 7th March, 1875 in Ciboure, France to Swiss and Basque parents. His father, also called Joseph, was an engineer, and continually encouraged his son to join the musical career. Ravel’s father’s job quickly brought them to Paris, where Ravel was taught privately first by Henri Ghys, then later on Emile Decombes. In 1889, when Ravel was approximately fourteen years old, he joined the Paris Conservatory in order to further his musical abilities. During his time there he was influenced by composers such as Rimsky-Korsakov, Wagner, Chabrier and Satie. When he first joined the Conservatory he enrolled as a pianist, but following Gabriel Fauré and André Gedalge’s advice, he switched to composition. Ravel is often compared to Debussy and the same could be done here, as both composers were at the Conservatory at the start of their careers. However, unlike Debussy Ravel refused to be tied down by the school’s composition rules, and though he failed to win prizes as Debussy did, the failure of winning the Prix de Rome in 1905 caused a public scandal, and this led to a change in the Conservatory directorship. Shortly after he left the Conservatory in 1895 Ravel wrote many successful pieces such as the Violin Sonata in 1897 and Shéhérazade in 1898.
A year after the Prix de Rome failure Ravel began writing a piece called Wien. It was an orchestral homage to Johann Strauss, one of his great ‘idols’, but the piece was not actually completed until fourteen years later. He did, however, write other pieces such as L’Heure Espagñole and Rapsodie Espagñole in 1907, Valse Nobles et Sentimentales in 1911, some major piano pieces, and Daphnis et Chloé for the Ballets Russes in 1912, staged by Sergei Diaghilev. During this time he also met Igor Stravinsky and he joined a group of composers known as Les Apaches. However, only a couple of years later World War One began, and Ravel ended up as a military transport driver due to his lack of physical strength. In 1916 dynsentery caused Ravel to be sent to Paris, where the desire to compose was re-ignited. However, shortly after he was sent to Paris to recover his mother died, something which affected Ravel very heavily. For a long period of time he wrote little, some of the pieces being Trois Poemes de Mallarmé (1913), Trois Chansons (1915) and Le Tombeau de Couperin (1917).
After the war Diaghilev contacted Ravel once again, asking for another ballet. This request was what caused Ravel to complete his piece, Wien, although he re-named it La Valse. Diaghilev, however, refused to stage it, as he said “ it’s not a ballet... it’s the portrait of a ballet...” This refusal was considered a great insult by Ravel, and the two never spoke again. He wrote another piece in 1925, called L’Enfant et les Sortiléges, and in 1928 he went on a concert tour of the United States, whilst writing Bolero in the same year. In 1929, however, Le Valse finally received the recognition it deserved, when Ida Rubinstein decided to stage it in the Paris Opera. In 1930 and 1931 Ravel wrote Piano Concerto G Major and Piano Concerto Left Hand, which were some of the last things he composed.
Only a couple of years before his death Ravel contracted the Pick’s disease, which could have been due to a car accident in 1932, although it was said that Ravel complained about memory problems and insomnia many year before that. He did start a couple of projects but only a few works, and he died on the 28th December, 1937, just under a year after he went through some unsuccessful brain surgery.
Ralph Vaughan Williams, born on the 12th October 1872, was the son of Reverend Arthur Vaughan Williams and Margaret Susan Wedgwood. He was born in the Cotswold village of Down Ampney, Gloucestershire, but when his father died in 1875 – at which point Williams was three years old – his mother took him to live at the Wedgwood family home; Leith Hill Place, in the North Downs. Williams also had a great uncle who would grow to become even more famous than himself: Charles Darwin.
Williams was born into the upper middle class of that time, but due to his democratic and egalitarian ideals, he worked all his life in order to support himself. He went to the Charterhouse School in Godalming, Surrey, and later went on to study at Trinity College in Cambridge. Williams then furthered his studies under Charles Villiers Stanford at the Royal College of Music, before going to study with Max Bruch in Berlin and then Ravel in Paris.
At the beginning of the 19th Century Williams was one of the first to travel to the countryside in order to collect folksongs and carols from singers. He noted it all down so that it could be enjoyed to the same extent by the generations which would follow. Williams, also being the musical editor of The English Hymnal, composed many hymns, such as For all the Saints, Come down O love Divine. In addition he helped edit The Oxford Book of Carols, which was equally successful.
During the First World War Williams volunteered to serve in the Field Ambulance Service in Flanders. Over the years he was greatly affected by the amount of bloodshedding and the loss of close friends such as the composer George Butterworth. Williams also had a very long-lasting and deep friendship with Gustav Holst, who in return influenced Williams’ work. After the war he frequently conducted and led the Leith Hill Music Festival, and not long after he was conducting Bach’s St. Matthew Passion on a regular basis. Following this he became a Professor of composition at the Royal College of Music in London, before dying on the 26th August 1958.
Williams’ work included nine symphonies, five operas, film music, ballet and stage music, several song cycles, church music and works for chorus and orchestra. He was one of the few Impressionist composers who was not French or had French bloodlines. He particularly enjoyed using the pentatonic scales and modes, one of the popular characteristics for Impressionist music.
Frederick Albert Theodore Delius was born on the 29th January, 1862, in Bradford, Yorkshire, England. He was the fourth of wool merchants Julius and Elise Pauline Delius’ fourteen children. Delius went to the Bradford Grammar School, and though he showed musical talent at an early age his father was against the musical career and wanted Delius to work in the family business. At the age of nineteen Delius joined the family business, but in 1884 he moved to Solano Grove near Jacksonville in Florida to manage an orange grove. However, the oranges were neglected as Delius focused increasingly on his music. The nature around him, as well as the Caribbean-style songs and dances, had a great influence on his musical style, and all of this inspired his piece Florida Suite.
In 1886 Delius returned from Florida, and in deciding to further his musical studies he enrolled at the Leipzig Conservatory. At this point he befriended Edvard Grieg, and these two shared their love for the mountain air and fjords of Norway. Grieg was the one who brought forth Delius’s deep respect for nature, and this caused him to become know as a pantheist – a worshipper of nature. Most of his music was inspired by his surroundings and the nature around him: the subtropical vegetation of Florida, the green fields and woods of France and England, and the snowy mountains of Norway. His adoration for nature is shown in his pieces, such as Over the Hills and Far Away, Sea Drift, A Song Before Sunrise and On Hearing the First Cuckoo in Spring.
Although Delius greatly admired England’s nature, he never returned there to live, and in 1894 he moved to Paris. It was this great city and its atmosphere which inspired him to write Paris: The Song of a Great City, but in 1897 he settled by the river in the village of Grez in France, close to the Fontainbleau forest. It was here he met the German artist Jelka Rosen, and they got married in 1904. She sacrificed her own career in order to nurse him through his last years when he was paralysed and blind due to syphilis, and even though the strain ruined Jelka’s health as well, she left her hospital bed to be with him when he died on the 10th June, 1934. However, though the first signs of illness were apparent already in 1922, Delius’ mind was unaffected, and he completed his last compositions with the help of his devoted English assistant, Eric Fenby, who also happened to be a composer.
Before this, however, in 1907, Delius met the conductor Sir Thomas Beecham. Beecham performed the first of many of Delius’s works, and he also recorded most of Delius’ music.
Delius’s music has hints of many different influences: the greatest was, as previously mentioned, the black American folk-songs and dances which he was subjected to in his early years, and in addition to this he was influenced by Wagner, Debussy, Williams and other English composers. Although he produced music which belongs more to the late Romantic period, he composed music throughout the end of the 19th Century and in the early part of the 20th Century.
My personal opinion on Impressionist art is admiration. I find it intriguing how the paintings have been done without too much detail, but at the same time look so vivid and full of colour and depth, not to mention light. The way in which the Impressionists painted straight onto the canvas was both bold and at the same time risky, but the result was a great blend of colours. I’m particularly fond of the way Monet uses earthy colours – it makes the paintings more realistic, as very few things in real life are very bright and boldly coloured, especially during the period of time when Monet was alive. The women’s dresses were mostly shades of white and faded pinks or blues or yellows – the colours were never as bold as the colour on the clothes we have today.
As for Impressionist music, I’m always reminded of the forest when I listen to the pieces. As the pace changes I think of people chasing each other through the forest – often I think of Bambi and The Sleeping Beauty, as both of these movies have quite a bit of music in them. In fact, many of the classics of Disney fit with this kind of music: the more dramatic parts of the pieces go well with the Disney short movie in which Mickey Mouse is a magician’s apprentice and he uses his magic to make the mops clean up for him. I think I prefer the more relaxed parts of the pieces, though, as I find it easier to ‘drift’ into them. The dramatic parts often come so suddenly that I feel like I’m jerked out of a dream, but otherwise I enjoy them, considering it’s classical music.
YouTube links: · Impressionism / Post-Impressionism: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ucsjYz0FGj0 · The Impressionists BBC (part 1): http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xZ4BNr2Ou7Q&feature=related · The Impressionists BBC (part 2): http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fmffTZxOL6w&feature=related · Impressionism Crash Course: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DQLwVtb8kDo · Impressionist painters: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BJKwE-JNrBw&feature=related · Ravel’s Bolero: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9i_N6eF4qOk · Delius’s A song before sunrise:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vtrhVEOteVM Pictures: · Claude Monet painting: http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3662/3427108929_bc12e469e4.jpg · Claude Monet painting: http://images.cdn.fotopedia.com/flickr-2827888296-original.jpg · Claude Monet painting: http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/a/ad/Claude_Monet_-_Water_Lilies_and_Japanese_Bridge.jpg · Renoir painting: http://lh4.ggpht.com/_JODiNkqy0pU/Sdw9ViFFIGI/AAAAAAAABmg/M7wJMqrJjyg/Renoir-GalleryPlayer_1.jpg · Renoir painting: http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/d/d8/Ambroise_Vollard_by_Pierre-Auguste_Renoir.jpg · Renoir painting: http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/c/c9/Pierre-Auguste_Renoir_022.jpg Sources: · http://library.thinkquest.org/27110/noframes/periods/impressionism.html · http://wapedia.mobi/en/Impressionist_music · http://www.notablebiographies.com/Pu-Ro/Renoir-Pierre-Auguste.html · http://giverny.org/monet/biograph/ · http://www.classical.com/composer/Joseph_Maurice_Ravel · http://www.classical.net/music/comp.lst/ravel.php · http://www.rvwsociety.com/biography.html · http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ralph_Vaughan_Williams · http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charterhouse_School http://www.humanitiesweb.org/human.php?s=c&p=a&a=i&ID=749
Impressionism in general came about after the Romantic era. It is said to have ‘started’ in the late 19th Century and continued well into the first half of the 20th Century. Impressionism was a result of the painters’ and composers’ impressions on perhaps a piece of scenery (artists) or a piece of previously composed music (composers). The style was, in both painting and composing, based on not having any defined ‘edges’, so to speak: the music had no set requirements in order to be classified as a piece of Impressionist music, and the paintings were meant to be drawn in a way which would make you think that the artist had taken one look at the landscape or view in front of them and had then tried to re-construct the landscape without defining the general features too much.
The traditional European style of painting was broken in the 19th Century. It marked the beginning of the Impressionism, and was an art style which brought in more scientific research on the aspects of colour, so as to achieve more exact representation of both colour and tone.
There was also a change in the method used, and this contributed to bringing about a very sudden change. Paint was applied in small touches instead of in broader strokes, and often artists would paint outdoors in order to observe and then paint a so-called ‘fleeting’ impression of colour and light. This resulted in a more distinguishable emphasis on the artist’s own impressions on the subject he or she was painting. The point of the style was to paint as though the artist had only caught a quick glimpse of it.
The colours used were almost always bright and vibrant with lots of colour. The majority of the painted scenes were outdoor ones, and this was supposed to result in images which were without too much detail, but at the same time with bold colours. The most well-known painters were Edouard Manet, Camille Pissaro, Edgar Degas, Alfred Sisley, Claude Monet, Berthe Morisot and Pierre Auguste Renoir.
One of our most famous Impressionist artists is Claude Oscar Monet, born on the 14th November in 1840. He grew up as the youngest of two sons in Le Havre, a city on the north-west coast of France. Monet expressed his love for art – as well as his hopes of becoming an artist – at an early age, and he started his studies at the age of eleven at the Le Havre arts school. Not long after he began selling charcoal paintings to the locals, and for a couple of years he studied with Jacques-Francois Ochard. After these years of practise Monet met and befriended Eugene Boudin, who not only taught Monet the “plein air” technique, but also helped him perfect his oil painting skills.
When Monet’s mother passed away in 1857 Monet left school in order to live with his aunt. During this time Monet visited the Louvre in Paris and observed the way in which the famous artists’ work had been imitated. However, instead of copying their style Monet simply sat by the window and painted what he saw, using the paints with which he travelled.
Four years later, Monet joined the First Regiment of African Light Cavalry in Algeria, but after only two years his aunt petitioned to have him sent home again on account of being diagnosed with typhoid. To make up for the five years of incomplete service in the cavalry, Monet decided to study art at university, and during this time, whilst studying with Charles Gleyre, he became acquainted with Pierre-Auguste Renoir, Frederic Bazille and Alfred Sisley. It was with these people Monet shared ideas on creating a new and more rapid form for painting. During these years he also met and had a son with Camille Doncieux, whom he married in June 1870.
Only a month after their wedding the Franco-Prussian War began, and so Monet and Camille moved to England. Monet continued to observe artists, and refused to give up even though his paintings were not accepted for display in exhibitions. In 1871 Monet and his family moved to Argenteuil, and it was then that Monet decided to focus more on developing his Impressionistic style. The result was “Impression, Sunrise”, only a year later, and this painting also served to name the Impressionist movement.
In 1876 Monet’s wife, Camille, fell ill, and although she managed to give birth to their second son, Michel, she never completely recovered, and died from tuberculosis in 1879. Monet painted her on her death bed as a last tribute.
In the months which followed Camille’s death Monet was in a state of depression, but once he recovered his determination to create masterpieces grew even stronger. It was at this point that he began painting series of paintings instead of single ones, and with this decision came the one to move into Ernest Hoshede’s home. Hoshede was considered a patron of the arts, but when he began to experience financial problems Monet moved to Possy with Alice, Hoshede’s wife, and her six children. Not long after they moved again, to Giverny this time, where Monet planted a huge garden which later served to inspire his famous willow and water lily paintings. After Hoshede’s death, in 1892, Alice and Monet got married.
With a continued focus on series’ paintings, Monet used his garden consistently for inspiration, and after Alice’s death in 1911, and Jean’s death in 1914, Monet developed cataracts. This affected his ability to see colour, but the paintings which he made between this time and the point at which he had surgery were readjusted later on.
Claude Oscar Monet died from lung cancer in 1926. He was buried in the Giverny church cementery, and the people in his family who were still alive passed his Giverny home and gardens to the French Academy of Fine Arts in 1966.
Pierre-Auguste Renoir was born on the 25th February 1841 in Limoges in France, and was the sixth of seven children. His mother, Marguerite Meret, was a dressmaker, and his father, Léonard Renoir, was a tailor. His family moved to Paris in 1844, and since Renoir’s drawing talents were obvious already then, he became an apprentice in a porcelain factory, where he had the job of painting plates. When the factory went out of business Renoir began working for his brother, decorating fans. During his years in Paris Renoir frequently visited the Louvre (just as Monet did), where he studied the art created by 18th Century artists such as Antoine Watteau, François Boucher and Jean Honoré Fragonard. The admiration which Renoir had for these painters and their pieces are reflected in his own pieces throughout his career.
In 1862, at the approximate age of twenty-one, Renoir decided to really take his painting seriously, and shortly after this decision he met Charles Gleyre. It was at this point that he met Monet, Alfred Sisley and Jean Frédéric Bazille. However, Gustave Courbet and Edouard Manet were also great influences on Renoir, something which was shown in the six years which followed.
The 1860’s were hard years for Renoir. At times he was too poor to buy paints and canvas, and his work was rejected in exhibitions during both 1866 and 1867. However, his breakthrough came the following year, when Lise (a portrait of his girlfriend Lise Tréhot) was accepted to be displayed. Renoir continued to develop his work and studied paintings by other artists which were famous during that time, such as Camille Corot and Eugène Delacroix.
In 1869 Renoir worked with Monet at a bathing spot on the river Seine called La Genouillère. During this time both artists developed an interest for painting light and water, and therefore it is not surprising that their styles were almost identical. However, as they continued to work together during the 1870’s their styles became more indivualised, and in 1874 Renoir participated in his first Impressionist exhibition, featuring Opera box amongst others.
During those same years Renoir’s popularity increased despite appearing in Impressionist exhibitions, which were at the time targets for public scorn. He made friends with Caillebotte, one of the first supporters of the Impressionists who also happened to be backed by art dealers and collectors. Renoir also produced some of his most celebrated Impressionist scenes in the 1870’s, such as Swing and Moulin de la Galette, which were both painted in 1876.
Later on, in the 1880’s, Renoir decided to ‘isolate’ himself from the Impressionists. He was discontent with the direction which the new style was taking in his hands, and so he travelled to Italy in 1881 in order to gain a different insight on painting. He was especially impressed by Raphael, and during the next six years or so Renoir’s paintings were drawn in a much ‘tighter’ and more classical manner. He made sure to outline his figures in an effort to provide more clarity in his pictures, resulting in some of the least impressive paintings in his career.
Fortunately Renoir was over his dry period by the end of the 1880’s, and the result of his ‘comeback’ was Music Lesson (1891), Young Girl Reading (1892) and Sleeping Bather (1897). These were some of the last paintings which Renoir painted before he suffered his first attack of arthritis in 1903. He settled in Cagnes-sur-Mer in France for the winter, and though his arthritis made it hard – sometimes impossible – to paint, he continued with his work, at times resorting to tying the paintbrush to his hand.
Pierre-Auguste Renoir died at Cagnes-sur-Mer on the 3rd December, 1919, but not before achieving a great victory: selling one of his last pieces, Madame Georges Charpentier (1877) to the state before he died. He also managed to go to see it in the Louvre in Paris before his death.
The era of Impressionist music began in the late 19th Century and continued into the early 20th Century. It was a movement which began in France, which also explains why most of the Impressionist composers were French (although Impressionism also affected the music style in England). The Impressionism era occurred as a result of the excesses of the Romantic era.
Impressionist music was not a set type of music – its main goal was to create a certain mood or atmosphere, and this was usually done through harmony, melody, “colour”, rhythm and form. The musical pieces in that period were usually written in short forms such as nocturne, arabesque and prelude.
Another characteristic of Impressionist music was the way in which it used the scale system. Instead of using simply the major and minor scales, it put into use the pentatonic and whole-tone scales. Debussy’s music, for example, was influenced by asian music. In addition, the use of harmony and dissonance was great, not to mention the new way in which chords were used to set “colour” and moo, instead of simply serving to build and relieve tension in the musical pieces.
Generally the mood and atmosphere created by Impressionist music was that of a dreamy and out-of-world feeling. This came as a result of having less prominent melodies, and combined with the weakened concept of tonality it formed a style of music which was based on the composer’s impressions, and aimed to bringing forth the listener’s impressions.
Joseph Maurice Ravel was born on the 7th March, 1875 in Ciboure, France to Swiss and Basque parents. His father, also called Joseph, was an engineer, and continually encouraged his son to join the musical career. Ravel’s father’s job quickly brought them to Paris, where Ravel was taught privately first by Henri Ghys, then later on Emile Decombes. In 1889, when Ravel was approximately fourteen years old, he joined the Paris Conservatory in order to further his musical abilities. During his time there he was influenced by composers such as Rimsky-Korsakov, Wagner, Chabrier and Satie. When he first joined the Conservatory he enrolled as a pianist, but following Gabriel Fauré and André Gedalge’s advice, he switched to composition. Ravel is often compared to Debussy and the same could be done here, as both composers were at the Conservatory at the start of their careers. However, unlike Debussy Ravel refused to be tied down by the school’s composition rules, and though he failed to win prizes as Debussy did, the failure of winning the Prix de Rome in 1905 caused a public scandal, and this led to a change in the Conservatory directorship. Shortly after he left the Conservatory in 1895 Ravel wrote many successful pieces such as the Violin Sonata in 1897 and Shéhérazade in 1898.
A year after the Prix de Rome failure Ravel began writing a piece called Wien. It was an orchestral homage to Johann Strauss, one of his great ‘idols’, but the piece was not actually completed until fourteen years later. He did, however, write other pieces such as L’Heure Espagñole and Rapsodie Espagñole in 1907, Valse Nobles et Sentimentales in 1911, some major piano pieces, and Daphnis et Chloé for the Ballets Russes in 1912, staged by Sergei Diaghilev. During this time he also met Igor Stravinsky and he joined a group of composers known as Les Apaches. However, only a couple of years later World War One began, and Ravel ended up as a military transport driver due to his lack of physical strength. In 1916 dynsentery caused Ravel to be sent to Paris, where the desire to compose was re-ignited. However, shortly after he was sent to Paris to recover his mother died, something which affected Ravel very heavily. For a long period of time he wrote little, some of the pieces being Trois Poemes de Mallarmé (1913), Trois Chansons (1915) and Le Tombeau de Couperin (1917).
After the war Diaghilev contacted Ravel once again, asking for another ballet. This request was what caused Ravel to complete his piece, Wien, although he re-named it La Valse. Diaghilev, however, refused to stage it, as he said “ it’s not a ballet... it’s the portrait of a ballet...” This refusal was considered a great insult by Ravel, and the two never spoke again. He wrote another piece in 1925, called L’Enfant et les Sortiléges, and in 1928 he went on a concert tour of the United States, whilst writing Bolero in the same year. In 1929, however, Le Valse finally received the recognition it deserved, when Ida Rubinstein decided to stage it in the Paris Opera. In 1930 and 1931 Ravel wrote Piano Concerto G Major and Piano Concerto Left Hand, which were some of the last things he composed.
Only a couple of years before his death Ravel contracted the Pick’s disease, which could have been due to a car accident in 1932, although it was said that Ravel complained about memory problems and insomnia many year before that. He did start a couple of projects but only a few works, and he died on the 28th December, 1937, just under a year after he went through some unsuccessful brain surgery.
Ralph Vaughan Williams, born on the 12th October 1872, was the son of Reverend Arthur Vaughan Williams and Margaret Susan Wedgwood. He was born in the Cotswold village of Down Ampney, Gloucestershire, but when his father died in 1875 – at which point Williams was three years old – his mother took him to live at the Wedgwood family home; Leith Hill Place, in the North Downs. Williams also had a great uncle who would grow to become even more famous than himself: Charles Darwin.
Williams was born into the upper middle class of that time, but due to his democratic and egalitarian ideals, he worked all his life in order to support himself. He went to the Charterhouse School in Godalming, Surrey, and later went on to study at Trinity College in Cambridge. Williams then furthered his studies under Charles Villiers Stanford at the Royal College of Music, before going to study with Max Bruch in Berlin and then Ravel in Paris.
At the beginning of the 19th Century Williams was one of the first to travel to the countryside in order to collect folksongs and carols from singers. He noted it all down so that it could be enjoyed to the same extent by the generations which would follow. Williams, also being the musical editor of The English Hymnal, composed many hymns, such as For all the Saints, Come down O love Divine. In addition he helped edit The Oxford Book of Carols, which was equally successful.
During the First World War Williams volunteered to serve in the Field Ambulance Service in Flanders. Over the years he was greatly affected by the amount of bloodshedding and the loss of close friends such as the composer George Butterworth. Williams also had a very long-lasting and deep friendship with Gustav Holst, who in return influenced Williams’ work. After the war he frequently conducted and led the Leith Hill Music Festival, and not long after he was conducting Bach’s St. Matthew Passion on a regular basis. Following this he became a Professor of composition at the Royal College of Music in London, before dying on the 26th August 1958.
Williams’ work included nine symphonies, five operas, film music, ballet and stage music, several song cycles, church music and works for chorus and orchestra. He was one of the few Impressionist composers who was not French or had French bloodlines. He particularly enjoyed using the pentatonic scales and modes, one of the popular characteristics for Impressionist music.
Frederick Albert Theodore Delius was born on the 29th January, 1862, in Bradford, Yorkshire, England. He was the fourth of wool merchants Julius and Elise Pauline Delius’ fourteen children. Delius went to the Bradford Grammar School, and though he showed musical talent at an early age his father was against the musical career and wanted Delius to work in the family business. At the age of nineteen Delius joined the family business, but in 1884 he moved to Solano Grove near Jacksonville in Florida to manage an orange grove. However, the oranges were neglected as Delius focused increasingly on his music. The nature around him, as well as the Caribbean-style songs and dances, had a great influence on his musical style, and all of this inspired his piece Florida Suite.
In 1886 Delius returned from Florida, and in deciding to further his musical studies he enrolled at the Leipzig Conservatory. At this point he befriended Edvard Grieg, and these two shared their love for the mountain air and fjords of Norway. Grieg was the one who brought forth Delius’s deep respect for nature, and this caused him to become know as a pantheist – a worshipper of nature. Most of his music was inspired by his surroundings and the nature around him: the subtropical vegetation of Florida, the green fields and woods of France and England, and the snowy mountains of Norway. His adoration for nature is shown in his pieces, such as Over the Hills and Far Away, Sea Drift, A Song Before Sunrise and On Hearing the First Cuckoo in Spring.
Although Delius greatly admired England’s nature, he never returned there to live, and in 1894 he moved to Paris. It was this great city and its atmosphere which inspired him to write Paris: The Song of a Great City, but in 1897 he settled by the river in the village of Grez in France, close to the Fontainbleau forest. It was here he met the German artist Jelka Rosen, and they got married in 1904. She sacrificed her own career in order to nurse him through his last years when he was paralysed and blind due to syphilis, and even though the strain ruined Jelka’s health as well, she left her hospital bed to be with him when he died on the 10th June, 1934. However, though the first signs of illness were apparent already in 1922, Delius’ mind was unaffected, and he completed his last compositions with the help of his devoted English assistant, Eric Fenby, who also happened to be a composer.
Before this, however, in 1907, Delius met the conductor Sir Thomas Beecham. Beecham performed the first of many of Delius’s works, and he also recorded most of Delius’ music.
Delius’s music has hints of many different influences: the greatest was, as previously mentioned, the black American folk-songs and dances which he was subjected to in his early years, and in addition to this he was influenced by Wagner, Debussy, Williams and other English composers. Although he produced music which belongs more to the late Romantic period, he composed music throughout the end of the 19th Century and in the early part of the 20th Century.
My personal opinion on Impressionist art is admiration. I find it intriguing how the paintings have been done without too much detail, but at the same time look so vivid and full of colour and depth, not to mention light. The way in which the Impressionists painted straight onto the canvas was both bold and at the same time risky, but the result was a great blend of colours. I’m particularly fond of the way Monet uses earthy colours – it makes the paintings more realistic, as very few things in real life are very bright and boldly coloured, especially during the period of time when Monet was alive. The women’s dresses were mostly shades of white and faded pinks or blues or yellows – the colours were never as bold as the colour on the clothes we have today.
As for Impressionist music, I’m always reminded of the forest when I listen to the pieces. As the pace changes I think of people chasing each other through the forest – often I think of Bambi and The Sleeping Beauty, as both of these movies have quite a bit of music in them. In fact, many of the classics of Disney fit with this kind of music: the more dramatic parts of the pieces go well with the Disney short movie in which Mickey Mouse is a magician’s apprentice and he uses his magic to make the mops clean up for him. I think I prefer the more relaxed parts of the pieces, though, as I find it easier to ‘drift’ into them. The dramatic parts often come so suddenly that I feel like I’m jerked out of a dream, but otherwise I enjoy them, considering it’s classical music.
YouTube links:
· Impressionism / Post-Impressionism: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ucsjYz0FGj0
· The Impressionists BBC (part 1): http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xZ4BNr2Ou7Q&feature=related
· The Impressionists BBC (part 2): http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fmffTZxOL6w&feature=related
· Impressionism Crash Course: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DQLwVtb8kDo
· Impressionist painters: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BJKwE-JNrBw&feature=related
· Ravel’s Bolero: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9i_N6eF4qOk
· Delius’s A song before sunrise: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vtrhVEOteVM
Pictures:
· Claude Monet painting: http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3662/3427108929_bc12e469e4.jpg
· Claude Monet painting: http://images.cdn.fotopedia.com/flickr-2827888296-original.jpg
· Claude Monet painting: http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/a/ad/Claude_Monet_-_Water_Lilies_and_Japanese_Bridge.jpg
· Renoir painting: http://lh4.ggpht.com/_JODiNkqy0pU/Sdw9ViFFIGI/AAAAAAAABmg/M7wJMqrJjyg/Renoir-GalleryPlayer_1.jpg
· Renoir painting: http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/d/d8/Ambroise_Vollard_by_Pierre-Auguste_Renoir.jpg
· Renoir painting: http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/c/c9/Pierre-Auguste_Renoir_022.jpg
Sources:
· http://library.thinkquest.org/27110/noframes/periods/impressionism.html
· http://wapedia.mobi/en/Impressionist_music
· http://www.notablebiographies.com/Pu-Ro/Renoir-Pierre-Auguste.html
· http://giverny.org/monet/biograph/
· http://www.classical.com/composer/Joseph_Maurice_Ravel
· http://www.classical.net/music/comp.lst/ravel.php
· http://www.rvwsociety.com/biography.html
· http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ralph_Vaughan_Williams
· http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charterhouse_School
http://www.humanitiesweb.org/human.php?s=c&p=a&a=i&ID=749